Tech

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Plucky, beautiful and declining in numbers at about a 2% annual rate, the rufous hummingbird makes its long annual migration in different timing and route patterns based the birds' age and sex, new research by Oregon State University shows.

The findings, published in the journal Avian Conservation & Ecology, are important because the more that is known about how rufous hummingbirds migrate, the more that can be done to ensure birds of different ages and sexes have the resources they need each year on their journey up and down the western part of North America.

"Different age-sex categories of rufous hummingbirds use alternative routes and differ in migration cycles and distributions," said the study's corresponding author, Jose?e Rousseau, a Ph.D. candidate in the OSU College of Forestry. "Our results seem to indicate that the age-sex categories could be affected in different ways by things like habitat loss and climate during migration. If we keep that in mind, we can make conservation efforts that help these amazingly feisty little creatures - and I describe them that way with the utmost respect - have the resources they need during their migration across the landscape."

With a reputation as one of the continent's most determined and assertive birds, the rufous hummingbird, scientifically known as Selasphorus rufus, weighs less than a nickel and tops out at about 3 inches long. Based on its body length, its migratory journey is one of the world's longest - the hummingbirds that travel the full extent of the range, from Alaska to Mexico, migrate almost 80 million body lengths, or 3,900 miles.

By comparison, an arctic tern covers about 51 million body lengths on the 13-inch bird's one-way flight of 11,000 miles.

Rufous hummingbirds live in open woodlands, nest in trees and eat nectar. A common visitor to bird feeders, the extremely territorial rufous hummingbird will chase away much larger species of hummingbirds, and they'll even drive squirrels away from their nesting areas.

Equipped with excellent memories, rufous hummingbirds will visit the same feeders over multiple years, even looking for food at former locations of feeders that have been moved.

The study by scientists in the Oregon State University College of Forestry and at the Klamath Bird Observatory in Ashland looked at 15 years' worth of fall migration banding data involving nearly 30,000 hummingbird captures at more than 450 locations.

The research showed that adult females tended to have a southbound migration route that was parallel to and between those of young and adult males, Rousseau said.

"Also, a greater number of young birds migrated south through California in comparison to adult females and adult males," she said. "Our results suggest that the migration of each age-sex category is separated by about two weeks, with adult males migrating first, followed by adult females, and then the young of both sexes. Interestingly, though, migration speed was not statistically different among the categories."

The adult males were captured within a smaller geographic distribution during any given week of migration compared with adult females and young birds, she added.

The world needs clean water, and its need is only going to grow in the coming decades. Yet desalination and other water-purifying technologies are often expensive and require a lot of energy to run, making it that much harder to provide more clean water to a growing population in a warming world.

To move forward, researchers should use tools such as those available at X-ray synchrotrons to better measure the properties of materials involved in purifying salty or otherwise contaminated water, argue scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of Paderborn in Germany,

"This is an opportune time for the country really - national labs, academia and industrial partners - to advance the science related to desalination" and other clean water technologies, said Michael Toney, a distinguished scientist at SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource. Toney together with coauthors SSRL scientist Sharon Bone and Paderborn's Professor Hans-Georg Steinrück have just published a new perspective on advancing clean water technology in the journal Joule.

The challenge is substantial. Around the world, billions of people struggle to find clean drinking water at least one month a year, and projections suggest that demands for water in some parts of the U.S. - including California, which struggles with droughts - will outpace supply by about 2050.

On top of that, desalinating or otherwise cleaning water is often costly and energy inefficient - and it's not always clear how to improve those technologies.

For instance, in membrane reverse osmosis, saltwater flows over a membrane under pressure, pushing clean water through the membrane into a freshwater stream and retaining salt, organics, and contaminants on the salty water stream. Yet researchers do not understand in much detail the physical and chemical processes responsible for that filtering or how some of the pitfalls of reverse osmosis - such as fouling, the accumulation of organic and inorganic matter on the membrane - interfere with the process.

"It's the complexity of these systems that make them so difficult to probe, and that's why the synchrotron is so valuable, because it allows us to probe that," Prof Steinrück said.

If researchers did understand better how reverse osmosis worked and how it can get fouled up, they could find clues to improve the process and to develop new materials for clean water technologies. X-ray spectroscopy, for example, could reveal which molecules are most responsible for fouling. X-ray scattering experiments and imaging methods, such as electron microscopy, could give scientists and engineers a better picture of what's happening on a fine scale. The same goes for other techniques, such as capacitive ionization, a technique that works best on low-salinity or brackish groundwater and is closely related to cutting-edge battery research. What's more, this fine-scale understanding could allow researchers to design new materials for desalination and to mitigate fouling.

That kind of research is also an opportunity for scientists to make more of a direct impact on an increasingly pressing global problem - a factor that motivated Bone, who also works to understand how pollutants and nutrients alike cycle through natural ecosystems, to work with colleagues at SLAC and chemical engineers at Stanford University on clean water technologies. Working with Stanford chemical engineering graduate student Valerie Niemann and Professor William Tarpeh, Bone and Toney have already begun investigating how foulants accumulate on reverse osmosis membranes.

"I wanted to join this effort because I saw it as an opportunity to directly work on a technology that could make an impact in the face of climate change," Bone said.

Smokers who have thoracic surgery are much more likely to stop using tobacco if they also complete a quitline intervention, a new UC Davis Health study shows.

Published in JAMA Surgery, the study is the first to evaluate the benefits of a quitline e-referral program, pioneered at UC Davis Health, in a surgery care setting. It found the combination of surgery with the program was more likely to get tobacco smokers to quit than if they just went through surgery or just participated in the program.

Quitting tobacco often is an expectation prior to thoracic operations, including for esophagus or lung conditions. Nonsmokers have better post-operative outcomes, according to the study's senior author and thoracic surgeon David Tom Cooke.

"The time between my first visit with a patient and surgery is critical for thoughtful conversations about quitting smoking, not just for the procedure but for long-term health," Cooke said. "We wanted to know if the e-referral program our colleagues' developed improved the success of those conversations."

Quitlines are telephone helplines offering support, guidance and resources for permanently quitting tobacco. The e-referral program is part of UC Davis Health's electronic health record system. With permission, physicians can securely send patient information directly to the California Smokers' Helpline, the state's free quitline. A quit coach then follows up within a couple of days to initiate an evidence-based counseling intervention.

All 111 study participants were tobacco users referred to the thoracic surgery clinic at UC Davis Health between Jan. 1, 2014, and Dec. 31, 2018. They were divided into four groups for comparison: nonoperative and operative Helpline participants, and nonoperative and operative Helpline nonparticipants.

While the Helpline improved quit rates for all who participated, it worked even better for those who had surgery. In fact, Helpline engagement tripled the odds of remaining smoke free at six months for surgical patients.

Cooke sees the study as an important launching point for surgical clinics becoming more engaged in population health.

"The study shows that smoking cessation can be easily woven into clinical encounters," Cooke said. "Thoracic surgery clinics in particular provide opportunities for addressing issues like opioid use, nutrition, mental health and more -- all of the factors that can improve lives."

Quantum computers have enormous potential for calculations using novel algorithms and involving amounts of data far beyond the capacity of today’s supercomputers. While such computers have been built, they are still in their infancy and have limited applicability for solving complex problems in materials science and chemistry. For example, they only permit the simulation of the properties of a few atoms for materials research.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago (UChicago) have developed a method paving the way to using quantum computers to simulate realistic molecules and complex materials, whose description requires hundreds of atoms.

“Ours is a powerful forward-looking strategy in computational materials science with the potential of predicting the properties of complex materials more accurately than the most advanced current methods can do at present.” — Marco Govoni, assistant scientist in the Materials Science division and Center for Molecular Engineering at Argonne

The research team is led by Giulia Galli, director of the Midwest Integrated Center for Computational Materials (MICCoM), a group leader in Argonne’s Materials Science division and a member of the Center for Molecular Engineering at Argonne. Galli is also the Liew Family Professor of Electronic Structure and Simulations in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and a Professor of Chemistry at UChicago. She worked on this project with assistant scientist Marco Govoni and graduate student He Ma, both part of Argonne’s Materials Science division and UChicago.

“Our newly developed calculational method,” Galli said, “greatly improves on the accuracy attainable with existing quantum mechanical methods regarding calculations for specific defects in crystalline materials, and we have implemented it on a quantum computer.”

In the last three decades, quantum mechanical theoretical approaches have played an important role in predicting the properties of materials relevant to quantum information science and functional materials for energy applications, encompassing catalysts and energy storage systems. However, these approaches are computationally demanding, and it is still challenging to apply them to complex, heterogeneous materials.

“In our research we developed a quantum embedding theory that permitted the simulation of ‘spin defects’ in solids by coupling quantum and classical computing hardware,” Govoni said. These types of defects in solids have applicability to the development of materials for quantum information processing and nanoscale sensing applications far beyond current capabilities.

“Ours is a powerful forward-looking strategy in computational materials science with the potential of predicting the properties of complex materials more accurately than the most advanced current methods can do at present,” Govoni added.

The team first tested the quantum embedding method on a classical computer, applying it to the calculations of the properties of spin defects in diamond and silicon carbide. “Past researchers have extensively studied defects in both diamond and silicon carbide, so we had abundant experimental data to compare with our method’s predictions,” said Ma. The good agreement between theory and experiment gave the team confidence in their method’s reliability.

The team then moved on to test the same calculations on a quantum simulator and finally on the IBM Q5 Yorktown quantum computer. The results confirmed the high accuracy and effectiveness of their quantum embedding method, establishing a stepping stone to solving many different kinds of materials science problems on a quantum computer.

Galli noted that, “With the inevitable maturity of quantum computers, we expect our approach will be applicable to the simulation of regions of interest in molecules and materials for the understanding and discovery of catalysts and new drugs, as well as aqueous solutions containing complex dissolved species.”

Galli’s team is part of MICCoM, headquartered at Argonne; the Chicago Quantum Exchange, headquartered at UChicago; and the QISpin project funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Their research leveraged the WEST software developed within MICCoM and made use of several computing resources besides the publicly available IBM quantum computer: the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, both DOE Office of Science User Facilities; and the University of Chicago Research Computing Center.

The team’s work is presented in an article entitled “Quantum Simulations of Materials on Near-term Quantum Computer” that appears in the July 2020 issue of npj Computational Materials. The research received support from the DOE Office of Science and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (July 28, 2020)--Engineers at Tufts University have created a first-of-its-kind flexible electronic sensing patch that can be sewn into clothing to analyze your sweat for multiple markers. The patch could be used to to diagnose and monitor acute and chronic health conditions or to monitor health during athletic or workplace performance. The device, described today in the journal NPJ Flexible Electronics, consists of special sensing threads, electronic components and wireless connectivity for real time data acquisition, storage and processing.

Typical consumer health monitors can track heart rate, temperature, glucose, walking distance and other gross measurements. But a more detailed understanding of the health, stress and performance of an individual is required for medical data collection or high performance athletic or military applications. In particular, metabolic markers such as electrolytes and other biological molecules provide a more direct indicator of human health for accurate assessment of athletic performance, workplace safety, clinical diagnosis, and managing chronic health conditions.

The patch device created by the Tufts engineers performs real-time measurements of important biomarkers present in sweat including sodium and ammonium ions (electrolytes), lactate (a metabolite) and acidity (pH). The device platform is also versatile enough to incorporate a wide range of sensors cabable of tracking nearly every marker present in sweat. The measurements taken can have useful diagnostic applications. For example, sodium from sweat can indicate the hydration status and electrolyte imbalance in a body; lactate concentration can be an indicator of muscle fatigue; chloride ion levels can be used to diagnosis and monitor cystic fibrosis; and cortisol, a stress hormone, can be used to assess emotional stress as well as metabolic and immune functions.

Athletes could monitor a wide range of markers during physical exertion to aid in predicting performance peaks or declines during competition.

The ability to integrate the sensors into clothing is made possible by flexible threads coated with conductive inks. Different coatings alter the functionality of the threads; for example, lactate can be detected by coating a thread with an enzymatic sensing material incorporating the enzyme lactate oxidase. A pH sensing thread is coated with polyaniline that responds to acidity, and so on. The array of thread sensors is integrated into clothing or a patch and connected to a miniature circuit module and microprocessor, with wireless capability to communicate with a smartphone.

"Sweat is a useful fluid for heath monitoring since it is easily accessible and can be collected non-invasively," said Trupti Terse-Thakoor, formerly a post-doctoral scholar at Tufts University School of Engineering and first author of the study. "The markers we can pick up in sweat also correlate well with blood plasma levels which makes it an excellent surrogate diagnostic fluid."

Researchers tested the device on human subjects, monitoring their electrolyte and metabolite response during a maximum exertion exercise on stationary bikes. The sensors were able to detect variation in analyte levels as they moved up and down, within 5 to 30 second intervals - sufficient for most real-time tracking needs. The subjects included men and women with a range of physical conditioning, from physically active on a performance-tailored diet, to individuals who were not physically active and had no specific dietary restrictions. While the current study was not meant to determine a correlation between analyte readings and performance and conditioning, it did establish that the sensor was able to detect consistent patterns of analyte expression that could be used for future studies identifying these correlations.

"The sensor patch that we developed is part of a larger strategy to make completely flexible thread-based electronic devices," said Sameer Sonkusale, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Tufts' School of Engineering and corresponding author of the study. "Flexible devices woven into fabric and acting directly on the skin means that we can track health and performance not only non-invasively, but completely unobtrusively - the wearer may not even feel it or notice it."

Collaborative Cancer Research UK-funded studies from University of Oxford researchers have uncovered a new mechanism by which cancer cells adapt to the stresses they encounter as they grow and respond to therapies. This mechanism involves cells releasing small vesicles, known as exosomes. These contain complex mixtures of proteins, RNAs and other molecules, which can re-programme surrounding cells. Exosomes are thought to be released by all cells within the body, and play important roles in many processes in healthy individuals such as immunity and reproduction. But, in cancer they can turn bad and drive pathological changes such as tumour growth and metastasis.

Up until now, research has suggested that exosomes are made in compartments in cells known as late endosomes, which are also used to keep cells healthy by clearing out damaged proteins and structures in the cell. By combining complementary analysis in fruit flies and human cancer cells, the collaborative teams have shown that exosomes are also made in the cell's recycling system, which diverts reusable proteins away from the waste disposal system. They are called Rab11a-exosomes and carry a different set of cargos that may help cancers to grow and survive current treatments.

As a tumour grows bigger, the cells within it are starved of key nutrients such as amino acids, and these stressed cells produce Rab11a-exosomes loaded with molecules made by the cancer cells. According to Associate Professor Deborah Goberdhan, who led the research: "These 'bad exosomes' can then give other cells around them a growth-promoting boost and can potentially lead to selection of more aggressive cell types and a worse outcome. The production of Rab11a-exosomes may explain why some patients don't respond to certain treatments and why others frequently develop resistance to therapies."

"It's becoming increasingly clear that anti-cancer therapies that block growth may need to be given in combination with drugs that prevent tumour cells adapting to the therapy, and reducing the production of these exosomes might be one important way to do this."

"A key step will be to work out how the bad exosomes that drive cancer progression are made, so that therapies can be designed to block them. This is likely to take some time. However, developing ways to detect these exosomes in patient blood is an important shorter-term goal. Such an approach might detect cancer at early stages or predict how patients will respond to drugs, both of which could have a major impact on cancer survival and the design of more personalised treatments for patients."

Dr Emily Farthing, Senior Research Information Manager at Cancer Research UK said: "This exciting research has discovered that exosomes can act in a way we weren't previously aware of, which could be helping tumours to grow and become resistant to anti-cancer treatments. This lab-based work is still a long way off benefitting people with cancer, but provides helpful clues to how we might be able to tackle the disease in new ways in future."

The newly published research has already attracted further funding to start screening for these alternative exosomes in patients, and a major current focus of the team is to identify ways of blocking their production, so that their role in cancer pathology can be fully assessed.

Professor Goberdhan said: "By continuing to combine analysis in human cancer cell lines and flies, we have started to highlight genetic manipulations that appear to specifically block the production of Rab11a-exosomes, which we are now following up."

Antibiotic resistance is an increasing battle for scientists to overcome, as more antimicrobials are urgently needed to treat biofilm-associated infections. However scientists from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick say research into natural antimicrobials could provide candidates to fill the antibiotic discovery gap.

Bacteria can live in two ways, as individual planktonic cells or as a multicellular biofilm. Biofilm helps protect bacteria from antibiotics, making them much harder to treat, one such biofilm that is particularly hard to treat is those that infect diabetic foot ulcers.

Researchers at the University of Warwick, Dr Freya Harrison, Jessica Furner-Pardoe, and Dr Blessing Anonye, have looked at natural remedies for the gap in the antibiotic market, and in the paper, 'Anti-biofilm efficacy of a medieval treatment for bacterial infection requires the combination of multiple ingredients' published in the journal Scientific Reports today the 28 July, researchers say medieval methods using natural antimicrobials from every day ingredients could help find new answers.

The Ancientbiotics research team was established in 2015 and is an interdisciplinary group of researchers including microbiologists, chemists, pharmacists, data analysts and medievalists at Warwick, Nottingham and in the United States.

Building on previous research done by the University of Nottingham on using medieval remedies to treat MRSA, the researchers from the School of Life Sciences at University of Warwick reconstructed a 1,000-year-old medieval remedy containing onion, garlic, wine, and bile salts, which is known as 'Bald's eyesalve', and showed it to have promising antibacterial activity. The team also showed that the mixture caused low levels of damage to human cells.

They found the Bald's eyesalve remedy was effective against a range of Gram-negative and Gram-positive wound pathogens in planktonic culture. This activity is maintained against the following pathogens grown as biofilms:

1. Acinetobacter baumanii- commonly associated with infected wounds in combat troops returning from conflict zones.

2. Stenotrophomonas maltophilia- commonly associated with respiratory infections in humans

3. Staphylococcus aureus- a common cause of skin infections including abscesses, respiratory infections such as sinusitis, and food poisoning.

4. Staphylococcus epidermidis- a common cause of infections involving indwelling foreign devices such as a catheter, surgical wound infections, and bacteremia in immunocompromised patients.

5. Streptococcus pyogenes - causes numerous infections in humans including pharyngitis, tonsillitis, scarlet fever, cellulitis, rheumatic fever and post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis.

All of these bacteria can be found in the biofilms that infect diabetic foot ulcers and which can be resistant to antibiotic treatment. These debilitating infections can lead to amputation to avoid the risk of the bacteria spreading to the blood to cause lethal bacteremia.

The Bald's eyesalve mixtures use of garlic, which contains allicin, can explain activity against planktonic cultures, however garlic alone has no activity against biofilms, and therefore the anti-biofilm activity of Bald's eyesalve cannot be attributed to a single ingredient and requires the combination of all ingredients to achieve full activity.

Dr Freya Harrison, from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick comments:

"We have shown that a medieval remedy made from onion, garlic, wine, and bile can kill a range of problematic bacteria grown both planktonically and as biofilms. Because the mixture did not cause much damage to human cells in the lab, or to mice, we could potentially develop a safe and effective antibacterial treatment from the remedy.

"Most antibiotics that we use today are derived from natural compounds, but our work highlights the need to explore not only single compounds but mixtures of natural products for treating biofilm infections. We think that future discovery of antibiotics from natural products could be enhanced by studying combinations of ingredients, rather than single plants or compounds. In this first instance, we think this combination could suggest new treatments for infected wounds, such as diabetic foot and leg ulcers. "

Jessica Furner-Pardoe, from the Medical School at the University of Warwick comments:

"Our work demonstrates just how important it is to use realistic models in the lab when looking for new antibiotics from plants. Although a single component is enough to kill planktonic cultures, it fails against more realistic infection models, where the full remedy succeeds."

In previous research Christina Lee, from the School of English at the University of Nottingham, had examined the Bald's Leechbook, an Old English leatherbound volume in the British Library, to see if it really works as an antibacterial remedy. The Leechbook is widely thought of as one of the earliest known medical textbooks and contains Anglo-Saxon medical advice and recipes for medicines, salves and treatments. Christina adds:
"Bald's eyesalve underlines the significance of medical treatment throughout the ages. It shows that people in Early Medieval England had at least some effective remedies. The collaboration which has informed this project shows the importance of the arts in interdisciplinary research."

Companies seeking to commercialize seafood products made from the cells of fish or shellfish should use the term "cell-based" on product labels, according to a Rutgers study - the first of its kind - in the Journal of Food Science.

Both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture require food products to have a "common or usual name" on their labels so consumers can make informed choices about what they're purchasing.

The study by William Hallman, a professor who chairs the Department of Human Ecology in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, is the first to evaluate what name should be used on labels for seafood products to best meet both regulatory and consumer acceptance criteria.

"The results suggest that 'cell-based' is the best name when it comes to meeting both FDA regulations and likely consumer acceptance of these novel products," Hallman said. "The participants were able to tell that 'cell-based seafood' products were different from 'wild caught' and 'farm raised' products, but viewed them as equally nutritious and were just as interested in tasting and purchasing them."

Demand for seafood continues to increase, but the global supply is vulnerable and cannot keep pace. By producing just the parts of fish that people eat rather than catching or raising them whole, cell-based seafood products are expected to offer a healthy, sustainable alternative that will look, cook and taste the same as conventional seafood. They will also have the same nutritional qualities and health benefits as farmed and wild caught seafood, but will be free of mercury, microplastics and other environmental contaminants.

In the Rutgers study, 3,186 consumers were asked to evaluate one of seven potential names as well as "wild caught" and "farm raised," shown on images of realistic packages of salmon, tuna or shrimp. The names tested were: "cell-based seafood," "cell-cultured seafood," "cultivated seafood," "cultured seafood," and the phrases, "produced using cellular aquaculture," "cultivated from the cells of ____" and "grown directly from the cells of ____."

Under FDA regulations, a common or usual name must clearly distinguish a new product type from those with which consumers are already familiar. For cell-based seafood, this means choosing a name that signals to consumers that the product is different from wild caught and farm raised seafood. Because the products will also have the same proteins as conventional fish and shellfish, the name chosen also needs to signal that people allergic to seafood shouldn't eat the product.

The study also stipulated that the name be seen by consumers as an appropriate term to identify the product and that it not disparage either cell-based or conventional products, which excluded testing terms such as "lab-grown," "synthetic," "slaughter-free" and "cruelty-free."

The study found that terms with the word "cell" in them, including "cell-based" and "cell-cultured," worked best in helping consumers understand that the products are neither farm raised nor wild caught.

The names "cell-based" and "cell-cultured" were not significantly different on most key measures, making "cell-cultured" also a potentially viable name. Consumers viewed both as appropriate to identify the product and they did equally well at signaling that people allergic to seafood shouldn't eat the products.

However, products labeled "cell-based" were seen by participants as equally desirable as "wild caught" and "farm raised" seafood products, while those labeled "cell-cultured" were not, suggesting that "cell-based seafood" is the better common or usual name to appear on products.

The study was supported by BlueNalu, a San Diego company led by Lou Cooperhouse, former director of Rutgers Food Innovation Center. Hallman has served as director of Rutgers Food Policy Institute and chaired the FDA's Risk Communication Advisory Committee. He serves on the Standing Committee on Advancing Science Communication of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Madagascar is a biodiversity hotspot. In the last 20 years new lemur species have been discovered while forested habitats have been quickly disappearing. Recent reports by the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) have identified the lemurs as one of the most threated groups of vertebrates, with 33 of the 107 recognized species being critically endangered.

In the last decades, the number of mouse lemurs has grown from two to more than 20 species today. Many of the new species discovered have been described on the basis of few genetic markers and some scientists have criticized the "species inflation" questioning the existence of nearly half of current species but without questioning the extinction risks.

Researchers studied 117 individuals and compared data such as description of size, hair color and habitat in northeastern Madagascar. According to Lounès Chikhi, principal investigator at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência involved in this important international scientific work, reveals that "instead of a limited number of genetic markers, we resort to genomic, ecological and morphological data, together with several sophisticated methods of inference. We demonstrated that the new individuals identified belong to a divergent lineage, a species never described before".

The new species now identified is called the Jonah rat lemur (Microcebus jonahi) in honor of the primatologist and conservation biologist Malagasy Prof. Jonah Ratsimbazafy, and is one of the smallest primate species in the world, with a total length from nose to tail of about 26 centimeters and a body weight of about 60 grams. They are very discreet animals that inhabit a small region in the tropical forests of the lowlands of northeastern Madagascar.

Interestingly, the same statistical analyzes the researchers conducted "suggest that two species described before did not meet the criteria applied to this new species" reinforces Lounès, explaining the work they developed.

In a period of intense and increasing deforestation and loss of habitat, the discovery of new species in places with a biodiversity as rich as Madagascar provides an important warning of how unique species may be very close to extinction.

"The loss of natural habitats and the constant change in land use in the region lead to the isolation of small populations and this favors their disappearance" warns the investigator. The path of discovery is not yet complete and other species may not have been described yet and are disappearing without knowing it.

When one in six Australian women report experiencing physical and/or sexual violence - and one in four report emotional abuse - by a current or previous cohabiting partner since the age of 15, you know there is a problem.

But when it comes to discussions around the impact of that violence on women's mental health, all too often their trauma is pathologised, with a focus on fixing the individual, rather than homing in on the significant societal issues that allow the abuse to happen in the first place.

University of South Australia researcher and expert in gendered violence and women's mental health Professor Nicole Moulding says we need a completely new approach to women's mental health following intimate partner violence (IPV) and coercive control, one that sees a woman's distress as a normal response, in a society where gender inequalities and biases underpin that violence.

"When women experience psychological and emotional distress in response to IPV - and this can continue for a long time after leaving - it is generally understood and categorised as 'trauma', 'anxiety' or 'depression'," she says.

"But this serves to detach the distress from the violence and control that caused it and casts the woman survivor of that violence as having the 'problem', her problem, that she must now manage and recover from.

"Even if there is some understanding that the violence caused the distress, she nonetheless becomes defined as psychologically unwell and damaged.

"We need to reframe women's mental health after IPV by looking at wellbeing in its social context to understand that the distress from violence is actually very normal, not diagnosable.

"We need to lift our gaze from the woman to all that surrounds her that allows the abuse to happen in the first instance."

In a recently published paper, Prof Moulding and her colleagues draw on responses from a large national study to gain an understanding of women's experiences of IPV and the far-reaching effects it has on their lives.

The study showed that while almost three quarters of women described good psychological well-being prior to IPV, more than half the women surveyed were diagnosed with a mental illness after IPV.

Professor Mould says one of the important findings of the study is the interconnected impacts of IPV on mental health, housing, employment, and social participation - what she calls key domains of citizenship.

"IPV often amounts to an assault on women's citizenship into the long term, stopping them from exercising their rights across all areas of citizenship," she says.

"When people have good mental health, decent housing, satisfying employment, and sufficient income and can be socially connected to others, they can participate properly and equally in society as full citizens.

"When we respond to women who are struggling with mental health as a result of IPV, we need to look beyond medication and counselling to make sure they have access to decent housing, quality low-cost or free childcare so that satisfying work is possible, and support groups and other local community services to reduce isolation.

"If you look at one domain alone - such as mental health - as if it is a silo, you don't see the compounding nature of the impact of IPV across all aspects of a women's life."

Prof Moulding says IPV will not decrease - and women will not take their place as full and equal citizens - until the gender inequality that enables gendered violence is addressed.

"There also needs to be widespread education in our community about the nature of violence against women and its impact," she says.

"We have to understand, as a society, that the position women survivors of partner violence find themselves in is a consequence of gendered ideas about men and women and related unequal power relations, which enable the violence in the first place and are subsequently reinforced by the violence continuing to happen."

In this digital era, there has been growing concern that children spend most of their playtime watching TV, playing computer games, and staring at mobile phones with 'head-down' posture even outdoors.

To counter such concerns, KAIST researchers designed a wearable bracelet using sound augmentation to leverage play benefits by employing digital technology. The research team also investigated how sound influences children's play experiences according to their physical, social, and imaginative aspects.

Playing is a large part of enjoyable and rewarding lives, especially for children. Previously, a large part of children's playtime used to take place outdoors, and playing outdoors has long been praised for playing an essential role in providing opportunities to perform physical activity, improve social skills, and boost imaginative thinking.

Motivated by these concerns, a KAIST research team led by Professor Woohun Lee and his researcher Jiwoo Hong from the Department of Industrial Design made use of sound augmentation, which is beneficial for motivating playful experiences by facilitating imagination and enhancing social awareness with its ambient and omnidirectional characteristics.

Despite the beneficial characteristics of sound augmentation, only a few studies have explored sound interaction as a technology to augment outdoor play due to its abstractness when conveying information in an open space outdoors. There is also a lack of empirical evidence regarding its effect on children's play experiences.

Professor Lee's team designed and implemented an original bracelet-type wearable device called SoundWear. This device uses non-speech sound as a core digital feature for children to broaden their imaginations and improvise their outdoor games.

Children equipped with SoundWear were allowed to explore multiple sounds (i.e., everyday and instrumental sounds) on SoundPalette, pick a desired sound, generate the sound with a swinging movement, and transfer the sound between multiple devices for their outdoor play.

Both the quantitative and qualitative results of a user study indicated that augmenting playtime with everyday sounds triggered children's imagination and resulted in distinct play behaviors, whereas instrumental sounds were transparently integrated with existing outdoor games while fully preserving play benefits in physical, social, and imaginative ways.

The team also found that the gestural interaction of SoundWear and the free sound choice on SoundPalette helped children to gain a sense of achievement and ownership toward sound. This led children to be physically and socially active while playing.

PhD candidate Hong said, "Our work can encourage the discussion on using digital technology that entails sound augmentation and gestural interactions for understanding and cultivating creative improvisations, social pretenses, and ownership of digital materials in digitally augmented play experiences."

Professor Lee also envisioned that the findings being helpful to parents and educators saying, "I hope the verified effect of digital technology on children's play informs parents and educators to help them make more informed decisions and incorporate the playful and creative usage of new media, such as mobile phones and smart toys, for young children."

This research titled "SoundWear: Effect of Non-speech Sound Augmentation on the Outdoor Play Experience of Children" was presented at DIS 2020 (the ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems) taking place virtually in Eindhoven, Netherlands, from July 6 to 20. This work received an Honorable Mention Award for being in the top 5% of all the submissions to the conference.

Researchers have revealed that commercial pesticides can be applied to crops in the Cucurbitaceae family to decrease their accumulation of hydrophobic pollutants (*1), thereby improving crop safety. The research group consisted of FUJITA Kentaro (1st year Ph.D. student) of Kobe University's Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Academic Researcher YOSHIHARA Ryouhei (now an assistant professor at Saitama University) and Associate Professor INUI Hideyuki of Kobe University's Biosignal Research Center, Senior Research Scientist KONDOH Yasumitsu, Technical Staff HONDA Kaori and Group Director OSADA Hiroyuki of RIKEN, and Lead Researcher HAGA Yuki and Senior Scientist MATSUMURA Chisato of Hyogo Prefectural Institute of Environmental Sciences.

The team developed two approaches to control the functions of plant proteins related to the transport of hydrophobic pollutants.

These findings will lead to these new functions of pesticides being utilized in agriculture, enabling safer crops to be produced.

These results were published online in the international scientific journal 'Science of the Total Environment' on June 23 and in 'Environmental Pollution' on July 18.

Main Points

Crops in the Cucurbitaceae family can accumulate hydrophobic pollutants (such as dioxins) in their fruits from contaminated soil. Major latex-like proteins (MLPs) (*2) play a key role in transporting hydrophobic pollutants to their fruits.

Approach 1: Treatment with a pesticide that suppresses the expression of MLP gene decreases the concentrations of hydrophobic pollutants in the xylem sap.

Approach 2: Treatment with a pesticide that binds to MLPs inhibits the binding of the proteins to hydrophobic pollutants. Thus, the concentrations of hydrophobic pollutants in the xylem sap that were transported via MLPs were reduced.

It was shown that pesticides could provide a simple and low-cost solution to the production of safer crops.

This study revealed, for the first time in the world, a new way that pesticides can be used in agriculture, which is different from current methods.

Research Background

Hydrophobic pollutants include dioxins, the insecticide dieldrin, and endocrine disruptors. These pollutants are highly toxic, and their manufacture and use are now prohibited. However, these substances were used in large quantities up until they were banned, causing widespread environmental pollution that also affects agricultural land.

The Cucurbitaceae family includes crops such as cucumbers and squashes. Members of this family are different from other plant species in that they accumulate high concentrations of hydrophobic pollutants in their fruits. Associate Professor Inui et al. previously discovered that major latex-like proteins (MLPs) in the Cucurbitaceae family play a key role in this accumulation. MLPs bind to hydrophobic pollutants taken up from the soil by the roots of the plant. The Cucurbitaceae family then accumulate hydrophobic pollutants in the leaves and fruits via the sap in the stems (Figure 1). Consequently, MLPs are a major factor that causes crop contamination in the Cucurbitaceae family.

When crops are found to have accumulated hydrophobic pollutants above the residual limit, all crops grown on the same land are unable to be sold, resulting in great economic losses for the producer. For this reason, much research has been conducted into ways to remove hydrophobic pollutants from agricultural soil, however a cost-effective and efficient method has yet to be found. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop technology for the cultivation of safer crops on arable land contaminated by hydrophobic pollutants.

Research Methodology

This study focused on pesticides that have been confirmed to be safe. The researchers tried two approaches designed to suppress the accumulation of hydrophobic pollutants via MLPs: utilizing a 'pesticide which suppresses MLP gene expression' and a 'MLP-binding pesticide'. They aimed to produce safer cucurbitaceous crops.

Approach 1 (published in 'Science of the Total Environment')

The application of a pesticide that suppresses MLP gene expression reduces the concentration of MLPs in the roots and xylem sap (*3). This suggested that the concentrations of hydrophobic pollutants accumulated in the fruits via MLP would also be reduced.

First, experiments were carried out to select a pesticide that could suppress MLP gene expression from five types of pesticide used on the Cucurbitaceae family (the insecticides Guardbait, Starkle, and Diazinon and the fungicides Benlate and Daconil). Daconil was chosen because treatment showed that its active ingredient (*4) could reduce MLP gene expression (Figure 2 A.). Next, it was confirmed that concentrations of MLPs in the roots and xylem sap of zucchini grown in soil contaminated with hydrophobic pollutants were reduced by the Daconil treatment (Figure 2 B.). Furthermore, the concentrations of hydrophobic pollutants in the xylem sap decreased by 52% (Figure 2 C.).

Approach 2 (published in 'Environmental Pollution')

The application of MLP-binding pesticide inhibits the binding of MLPs to hydrophobic pollutants in the roots. In other words, the amount of MLPs that binds to the pollutants is reduced. It was hypothesized that this approach would decrease the concentrations of hydrophobic pollutants accumulated in the fruits via MLPs.

First of all, chemical arrays (*5) with approximately 22,000 compounds from the RIKEN NPDepo (*6) were used to identify compounds that bound to MLPs. The insecticide Colt that can be applied to crops in the Cucurbitaceae family was selected from commercial pesticides with similar structures to MLP-binding compounds. When Colt's active ingredient was reacted with both MLPs and the hydrophobic pollutants, the concentration of MLPs bound to these pollutants decreased by 78%. In addition, the concentrations of these pollutants in the xylem sap fell by 15% after Colt treatment.

Further Research

This study revealed, for the first time in the world, that it is possible to cultivate safer crops in contaminated soil through the control of the plant's functions. This achievement could reduce the number of cases where producers experience economic losses due to being unable to sell crops grown in contaminated soil. Furthermore, this will also provide consumers with safe produce.

A new method of utilizing pesticides has been revealed by this research. For the first time in the world, this study has revealed a novel aspect of pesticides beyond their original functions of preventing pests or weed growth. Pesticides are thought to be extremely safe because they have to pass numerous strict safety tests. Furthermore, the standardized treatment of crops with pesticides is simple and inexpensive. Therefore, it is anticipated that the method developed by this study to reduce hydrophobic pollutants using pesticides will become widespread across the globe.

AMES, Iowa - New research shows that selecting a targeted retirement fund that ends in a zero could negatively impact your retirement savings.

The study, published online in the Journal of Consumer Research, identified a "zero" bias or tendency for individuals to select retirement funds ending in zero as compared to funds ending in five. This zero bias affects the amount people contribute to retirement savings and leads to an investment portfolio with an incompatible level of risk, which can significantly lower total wealth at retirement, the findings show.

Wei Zhang, Kingland Faculty Fellow in Business Analytics and associate professor of marketing in Iowa State University's Ivy College of Business, and co-authors Ajay Kalra, Rice University; and Xiao Liu, New York University, analyzed data from a global financial investment firm that included 84,600 individual accounts - nearly half of the sample invested in targeted funds. The researchers found investors born in years ending in eight or nine tend to select targeted funds that mature earlier than they intend to retire.

According to the results, approximately 34% of people born in years ending with eight or nine select early retirement funds and all of them end up worse off financially. About 29% of people born in years ending in zero through two select fund dates that are later than they plan to retire and end up better off, except for those who are risk-averse.

One benefit of a targeted retirement fund is that it automatically rebalances the portfolio over time, decreasing the percentage invested in stocks and increasing the percentage invested in bonds. This reduces the risk as the investor nears retirement.

"Targeted funds offer a 'set it and forget it' approach to investing, which is popular for consumers who don't want to navigate financial decision-making," Zhang said. "However, that initial decision of selecting a targeted plan has implications."

The researchers also looked at several demographic factors where the likelihood of "zero bias" was stronger. They found men, older people and those with higher incomes are more likely to demonstrate the bias. Investors who participated in a 30-minute financial planning program were less likely to exhibit the zero bias tendency, Zhang said.

Wealth implications

In the paper, the researchers explained how the zero bias affects accumulated wealth:

Investors contribute less if they select a later-date retirement fund compared to the matching targeted fund.

Zero bias exposes investors to different risk-return trade-offs: Selecting a non-matching targeted fund exposes investors to risk that may be incompatible with their stage of life.

The extent of losses incurred by not choosing a matching targeted fund can be quite large depending on birth year.

Mitigating the bias

The findings indicate that the bias is a result of imprecise math, specifically rounding up or down to estimate retirement age. By understanding this bias and how it relates to birth years, financial advisers can better inform investors of their choices.

"Given that many individuals are choosing targeted retirement funds for their retirement portfolio, the insights from our paper will help financial service companies and consumers to improve investors' financial well-being," Zhang said.

Blood platelet counts at the higher end of normal suggest a high risk of cancer in men aged 60 or over, and should be investigated, according to new University of Exeter research.

Platelets perform a crucial function in blood, including helping blood to clot, which helps us heal wounds. However, Exeter researchers have previously found that cancer risk is significantly raised by having an abnormally high blood platelet count (more than 400 x 109/l,) a condition known as thrombocytosis. Now, they have found that cases of cancer greatly increased in older males with a platelet count on the high end of normal range (326 to 400 x 109/l), indicating that these patients should be investigated for cancer.

In a study funded by NIHR and published in the British Journal of General Practice, researchers reviewed the records of nearly 300,000 patients who had platelet counts on the higher end using data from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink and the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service. They found that the number of these patients diagnosed with cancer a year later was significantly higher if the patients had even slightly raised platelet levels. Of 68,181 male patients with levels of blood platelet on the higher end of normal, 1,869 cases of cancer were diagnosed within one year. Of these, 720 were an advanced stage. A higher platelet count was most frequently linked to lung and colorectal cancers - both aggressive forms of cancer.

Dr Sarah Bailey, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Exeter Medical School who led the research, said: "After finding that having a blood platelet count above normal range put people at high risk of cancer, we investigated the risk at the high end of normal. We found that men aged over 60 whose platelet count is on higher end of a normal are more likely to have an underlying cancer. Updating guidance for GPs to investigate higher platelet counts could save lives. This is particularly important in a post-COVID era; clues to help GPs identify cancer earlier are crucial to target the backlog in cancer investigation and diagnosis"

Professor Willie Hamilton, of the University of Exeter Medical School, said: "The UK lags well behind other developed countries on early cancer diagnosis. Our findings on platelet count and cancer diagnosis can help to combat that lag. It is now crucial that we roll out cancer investigation of thrombocytosis. It could save hundreds of lives."

Research from the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center - Jefferson Health (SKCC) found significant decreases nationwide in the number of patients being seen for cancer-related care as the COVID-19 pandemic progressed during the few first months of 2020. The most significant decline was seen in encounters related to new cancer incidences, which included screening, initial diagnosis, second opinion, and treatment initiation appointments.

Anecdotal reports and physician surveys have suggested dramatic declines; however, this study, which was published in JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics, is the largest to date to measure the effects of the pandemic on normal cancer care activities.

"While it is not surprising that the pandemic has had a significant impact on patients seeking care, it was important to test and quantify these trends using a large, institutionally agnostic dataset, as the results have important implications for future cancer patients and the potential burden on hospitals moving forward," said Christopher McNair, PhD, Director of Cancer Informatics at SKCC and senior author of the study.

McNair, along with Jack London, PhD, Research Professor Emeritus of Cancer Biology at Thomas Jefferson University, and colleagues leveraged the TriNetX platform to create a COVID and Cancer Research Network (CCRN). The CCRN is comprised of data from 20 healthcare organizations representing over 28 million patients throughout the United States and includes aggregate data from electronic medical records such as diagnoses, procedures, laboratory testing, and demographics. Using the CCRN, the study team compared the number of patients with cancer-related encounters in January through April of 2019 with those in January through April of 2020.

McNair and team identified a significant decline in patients with encounters associated with any neoplasm, including malignant, benign, and in situ diseases (-56.9%); new incidence neoplasms (-74%); malignant disease (-50%); and new incidence malignant disease (-65.2%). The researchers also looked at data from University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust in the United Kingdom, which showed similar trends. However, the researchers cautioned that more data are needed to compare trends outside the United States, as these findings are from a single hospital.

"While the decreases themselves were not unexpected, the magnitude of decline, while using a national cohort this large, was surprising," McNair said.

The researchers also looked at these encounters by cancer type. Patient encounters decreased across all cancer types, although they observed a greater decrease related to melanoma (-51.8%), breast cancer (-47.7%), and prostate cancer (-49.1%) than lung cancer (-39.1%), colorectal cancer (-39.9%), and hematological cancers (-39.1%).

Additionally, McNair and colleagues also found that mammograms declined 89.2% in April 2020 compared with April 2019 and colorectal cancer screenings declined by 84.5% during the same period. The researchers plan to track screenings in the coming months as virus mitigation efforts are eased to help predict how many patients are continuing to delay cancer screenings due to the pandemic.

"The most significant finding in our study was the considerable drop in cancer screenings. The fact that this trend was so drastic nationwide is telling of the widespread effect of the pandemic and mitigation efforts - even in regions that had not seen a significant impact from the virus at the time," McNair said.

SKCC is participating in several key initiatives designed to help elucidate how COVID-19 affects cancer patients and clinical care, including the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium (CCC19) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Survey on COVID-19 in Oncology Registry. CCC19 is an international registry database that is tracking outcomes among cancer patients who have also been diagnosed with COVID-19. The ASCO Registry is collecting baseline and longitudinal data from oncology practices across the United States to examine the how the virus is affecting cancer care delivery and patient outcomes.

These registries are important in order to understand both short- and long-term impacts of the trends seen here, according to McNair.

The researchers will continue to look at trends throughout the summer and into the fall, especially as states are more drastically affected. It will be important to understand trends in cancer diagnoses to determine if delays in screening are resulting in an increased number of patients presenting with later-stage disease, McNair said.

"These findings are truly striking, as modeling from the National Cancer Institute has predicted thousands of expected increases in cancer death as a result of deferred breast and colorectal screening alone," said Karen E. Knudsen, MBA, PhD, Executive Vice President of Oncology Services, Jefferson Health, and Enterprise Director of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center. "This report is a nationwide call to arms, underscoring the urgent need to resume cancer screening and early detection."